Reader-recommended apps for your shiny new Android tablet

Need even more Android tablet apps? Your fellow readers fill in the gaps.

Last week we put together a list of Android tablet apps to help you (or your relatives) outfit the new devices sitting under your trees (or your Festivus poles, if that's more your style.) Ars readers are a helpful bunch, though, and all of you put together a much more extensive list to help jumpstart new tablets. For your benefit, we've rounded up the ones we liked best, sometimes using your own wordsto argue why you really need to download these apps right now. If your tablet is of the Apple persuasion, don't worry—you all recommended plenty of apps for iPads as well.

Enlarge/ Both Dolphin and Opera Mobile let you request the desktop versions of sites by default.

Andrew Cunningham

We still recommend Chrome and Firefox for Android as solid browsers with the best rendering engines, but the Dolphin browser also won some praise from our readers, not least because of its ability to emulate different user agents, thus making Web pages always deliver the desktop versions of sites rather than having to make individual requests as you do in Chrome. This is also a feature that Opera Mobile supports. "For me [Opera] was the obvious choice as the best browser," said Ars user Hinton. "It allows itself to spoof as a desktop browser, so you avoid those awful mobile sites. Also you can enable Opera Turbo to conserve bandwidth and load pages faster." Even if you prefer Firefox or Chrome most of the time, it can never hurt to have another browser around to try when something just isn't working correctly (or, if like Ars user TheFu, you prefer using separate browsers for work and for fun).

We got quite a few game recommendations to back up our own (which, for the record, included the excellent Jetpack Joyride, the relaxing Eufloria HD, and Solitaire, the original time waster), but the one we enjoyed the most was Ubisoft's Rayman Jungle Run, a game that combines the endless running of games like Jetpack Joyride with more traditional two dimensional platforming split up into distinct levels. It looks and runs great on Android tablets like our Nexus 7, and it uses the same gorgeous 2D art style pioneered in 2011's Rayman Origins and the upcoming Rayman Legends.

We recommended both Spotify and Rdio as great music streaming services, but if you want to listen to them on your tablet you'll eventually have to cough up some cash. For something that's a bit more free, one reader recommended Songza, which offers free curated playlists for a number of musical genres (and has an excellent Android tablet interface, to boot). It doesn't let you choose your own songs or customize a "station" as Pandora does, but the playlists that are there are pretty well done. It will also recommend playlists for you based on how you're feeling: if you need a good pump-up mix to get you through Friday afternoon, Songza is the app for that.

TuneIn Radio is another free alternative to a la carte streaming services like Spotify or Rdio: it allows you to search through and listen to a huge number of live radio streams covering practically every subject matter and musical genre imaginable, and it lets you do it for free. Spending a dollar on the Pro version will net you the ability to record the radio shows you like the most. Finally, if you're into making music as well as listening to it, one reader recommended PitchLab Pro, a free app for both phones and tablets that will help musicians tune their instruments or check vocal pitches. Most common tunings are available in the app, and you can also set your own custom tunings.

Evernote is a reasonably capable mobile word processor, but it's more than just that: it will also help you organize your notes into different virtual notebooks and add photos, video, and audio clips. This makes it ideal for authors or journalists doing research for their next big project, or for students trying to get their next term paper organized. Evernote has been fully optimized for Android tablets, and Evernote clients also exist for nearly every smartphone, tablet, and desktop platform available, so syncing your notes and other items between your tablet and the rest of the gadgets in your life is nice and easy.

Enlarge/ The Moon+ Reader will let you pull down free, DRM-less e-books from a number of sources.

Andrew Cunningham

The Moon+ Reader and Mantano both came up in the comments a few times as DRM-free alternatives to the Kindle and Nook apps. Ars reader drpfendersonmakes a strong argument for the Moon+ reader:

"[It] supports every major format (epub, pdf, mobi, chm, cbr, cbz, umd, fb2, txt, html, rar, zip), has built-in net library (and OPDS support), Dropbox integration, excellent library support, and tons of configuration options. It basically replaced 3-4 apps I was using all at once: one to manage my library and transfer my books, one to read PDF, one to read EPUB/MOBI, and one to read CBR/CBZ. The various themes make it gorgeous on my Nexus 7, but it even works perfectly on my ol' Nexus One."

Meanwhile, Ars reader charleski comes out in favor of Mantano as the best choice for reading e-books as the publisher intended:

"If you're looking for an ePub reader that actually renders the css in the ePub properly, your only choice is Mantano, which also includes a PDF reader and a very capable system for managing the notes you make. All of the other readers (and I've tried all the major ones) seem to have gone down the brain-dead path of over-riding everything in order to give the user a spurious sense of control over the layout. Moon+ offers a crippled 'publisher formatting' mode that scrolls the page and doesn't allow highlighting, but only Mantano manages to render the book the way it's supposed to look."

The one you prefer will probably depend on what your priorities are, but if you'd prefer not to support e-booksellers that use DRM, you've got plenty of options.

Enlarge/ Eye In Sky looks slick and includes a number of efficient and useful widgets, a must for any weather app.

Andrew Cunningham

Some of you complained that the AccuWeather app and its background processes were battery crunchers, and we ourselves observed that performance wasn't as good as it could be. Eye In Sky has a clean, minimalistic look, great performance, an array of flexible home screen widgets, and nice phone and 10-inch tablet interfaces (though its 7-inch interface is just the phone interface stretched out.)

Enlarge/ Emacs is such a serious text editor that you really won't want to use it without an actual keyboard.

Andrew Cunningham

We've targeted most of our recommendations so far to more general users, but Ars readers are often pushing their tablets to do increasingly complex tasks. Enter Emacs, which is a text and code editor ported over from desktop platforms so thoroughly that it warns you to connect a physical keyboard (or a touch analogue like the Hacker's Keyboard) when you first start it. One reader also recommended the Android Java IDE (AIDE), a coding environment that allows you to write and compile code directly on your tablet. You'll also probably want a full physical keyboard for this one, as for anything that's especially heavy on text entry, but AIDE is one of several programs that makes it possible to write and compile Android apps directly on Android itself.

Next steps

Of course, these aren't all of the apps that our readers recommended, and you'll probably have even more recommendations to make after this article—help your fellow readers by calling out even more apps! If you're looking for other tablet-optimized apps on your own and are having trouble finding them, however, an alternative app store might be the ticket—one reader recommended the free Tablified Market HD, a well-reviewed and frequently updated app store that plucks tablet-optimized apps from the wider Google Play store to make them easier to find. If you're still looking for killer apps after reading these two articles, the Tablified Market should be your next stop.

Listing image by Andrew Cunningham

Andrew Cunningham
Andrew has a B.A. in Classics from Kenyon College and has over five years of experience in IT. His work has appeared on Charge Shot!!! and AnandTech, and he records a weekly book podcast called Overdue. Twitter@AndrewWrites

If you need a hacker's editor, you're probably going to want an environment with a working shell, and that means you want ZShaolin, which also happens to come with a HUGE-compiled version of Vim. I use it on a Nexus 10 with a Bluetooth keyboard for about 50% of my work and it's fantastic, in no small part because it's much harder to get distracted while using it versus a laptop with a bunch of different notifications (that, if I'm at the laptop, I can't turn off for work reasons--so the solution is to not be at the laptop).

Palmary Weather has gorgeous widgets in a variety of styles, and so many features that I'd almost call some of them hidden. You'll still be finding things you can scroll or flip or tap to get additional information, or a different view of the same information, days after you first install and configure it.

2 day, hourly, 15 day forecasts, animated satellite, cloudcover, visibility, precipitation maps, 2 day and 7 day charts of projected high and low temps and precipitation percentages, I could go on...

As for ebook readers go, I've always found FBreader (free) as my favourite: nice, stable and infinitely configurable to my -rather picky- tastes. It's been in all my mobile devices since ages, and every time I drift away from it, I end up going back.

As for ebook readers go, I've always found FBreader (free) as my favourite: nice, stable and infinitely configurable to my -rather picky- tastes. It's been in all my mobile devices since ages, and every time I drift away from it, I end up going back.

I completely agree. It has it's quirks -- I dunno where it gets the "tags" from, but it isn't my meta data and makes using tabs worthless.

It's the only reader I've found that doesn't create a second copy of everything for it's own use. Creating a second hidden library makes library tools like Calibre worthless since you can't remove books from the reader app.

A lot of the 1 star reviews on the keyboard are from people freaking out over warnings about stealing passwords/credit card numbers? Is this a legit concern; or would any replacement keyboard trigger the same message?

A lot of the 1 star reviews on the keyboard are from people freaking out over warnings about stealing passwords/credit card numbers? Is this a legit concern; or would any replacement keyboard trigger the same message?

Any replacement for your keyboard would need that kind of access. It comes down to who you trust.

Weather Apps? The latest version of the one recommended here is getting bad reviews (for not updating properly). Me, I burned through half a dozen or more weather apps, all with some serious issues, before settling on one that was more-or-less right for me. To my surprise, the Yahoo! Weather app doesn't suck ... as much as the others I've tried.

Spoiler: show

It may also be a bit of a battery burner, but has fewer issues in general than the others I've tried. Their home screen widget actually works as well. You can select multiple locations, including one based on GPS, and step through them from the widget, without pushing into the app. Because the temperature can vary by as much as 15 degrees around Albuquerque, I've gone with the GPS location only on my Galaxy Nexus phone, and that plus the "official" airport temp on my Nexus 7 tablet, on which it works quite well.

Games ... a recent favorite that I've not seen mentioned here is Highway Rider, by Battery Acid Games. (Caution: there are multiple apps with the same name in the Play store!) It's a bit like a running game, but you're on a motorcycle, zooming down a two-lane freeway at increasing speed, trying not to hit cars, trucks, and roadside objects such as construction cones and barricades.

Spoiler: show

The closer you come to them without contact, the more points you get, up to 5 points for "perfect." Landscape only, with tilt control of steering. The only other controls are a side-tap for a speed boost tank, and a tap on the rider's back for a chortle or a wheelie. It has two basic modes. In "Arcade" mode, it's straight road with nothing but vehicles - cars and trucks, all of which want to change lanes - often. It has a "Fugitive" mode, at which I suck, that adds police cars and blockades. As you advance, you collect gas caps, with which you can "buy" new riders. Each rider's bike handles differently - I've had the best luck with the two undead riders. I've made no in-app purchases and have topped out, rider-wise, though it took me a while. Note: if you get tired of hearing a failed rider's laments and so on, you can tap through. You can tap through pretty much everything here, which was a really good decision by the devs. Ad supported, which is annoying but tolerable. (Wi-Fi off on my tablet avoids them.)

Edit: that got quite a bit longer than I expected. Added spoiler tags.

A quick note about Evernote; it really IS available on nearly every platform. My wife has a Nexus 7 (hence the reason I read the article), but I use a Nokia Lumia 900 (Windows Phone 7.5). I decided to put that claim to the test and there sure-as-$#!^ is an Evernote app for free in the Windows Phone Marketplace. Very awesome indeed.

I'll have to check out a few of these recommendations.* Moon+ Reader* AIDE

I remember trying Moon+ last year, but decided something wasn't right about it ... perhaps it didn't honor my Calibre directory structure? I can't recall now. Need to check it out again.

AIDE intrigues me too. Normally, I use Terminal IDE and ssh back to my home workstation to use vim, but there are times when a local syntax highlighted editor might be nice. Of course, my tablet is paired with a almost full-size USB keyboard in a protective tablet/keyboard portfolio. Without a keyboard and it becomes an e-reader, IMHO, not a device to get work completed.

Terminal IDE brings much of the Linux/bash/ssh power to Android. So far the only things that I've missed are scp and rsync/ssh CLI programs.

Ah .. found VimTouch. Life will be just fine after that is installed on the tablet.

Can someone comment on the status of Android tablet apps? I keep on hearing that there are very little tablet-optimized app for Android, but I would like to hear opinions from actual Nexus 7/10 owners.

I just switched from iPhone 4 to Nexus 4 and would be interested in replacing my iPad 3 with Nexus 10

As for ebook readers go, I've always found FBreader (free) as my favourite: nice, stable and infinitely configurable to my -rather picky- tastes. It's been in all my mobile devices since ages, and every time I drift away from it, I end up going back.

I want to second that. FBreader has been good to me. I love curling into bed, switching it into night mode (white text on black background), and then using the handy gestures to adjust down the brightness level to where I want it. I can happily read in the dark without any eye strain, and because it is dark, it gets me in the mood for sleeping.

Can someone comment on the status of Android tablet apps? I keep on hearing that there are very little tablet-optimized app for Android, but I would like to hear opinions from actual Nexus 7/10 owners.

I don't own a Nexus tablet but I do own a Transformer Prime.

I haven't found a need for special tablet apps. Almost all of my favorite apps adjust to the display size dynamically and don't require the use of the special "zoom" button. Pulse is a good example. It just displays more news tiles on a larger screen. FBreader works just as well on the tablet as it does on the phone. Magazine apps such as Linux Journal and the Economist seem to just display more of the page which removes the need to zoom in and scroll. There are several games that I like which seem to change their control layout for use on tablets, although I suspect they are just examining the display properties and adjusting the layout.

It seems to me that Android doesn't need special tablet apps, as long as the app authors have written the app to use dynamic adjustments for display properties. The large variety of displays for Android makes this necessary anyway, unlike the Apple environment where there are only two display sizes, plus 2x resolutions.

A quick note about Evernote; it really IS available on nearly every platform. My wife has a Nexus 7 (hence the reason I read the article), but I use a Nokia Lumia 900 (Windows Phone 7.5). I decided to put that claim to the test and there sure-as-$#!^ is an Evernote app for free in the Windows Phone Marketplace. Very awesome indeed.

It's the only reader I've found that doesn't create a second copy of everything for it's own use. Creating a second hidden library makes library tools like Calibre worthless since you can't remove books from the reader app.

Calibre Companion = No more organizational issues. You shouldn't be relying on your ebook reader for library management. You should use a library management tool. And Calibre Companion is the only app I know of that is officially supported by the Calibre dev. And typically all you have to do with ereader apps to fix your problem is just set the library directory to the directory you already store your files in. BOOM. No second library.

Rindan wrote:

I want to second that. FBreader has been good to me. I love curling into bed, switching it into night mode (white text on black background), and then using the handy gestures to adjust down the brightness level to where I want it. I can happily read in the dark without any eye strain, and because it is dark, it gets me in the mood for sleeping.

Moon+ has all those features, except they're actually customizable (night themes, swipe gestures, page-turn positioning). I switched from using FBReader after 5+ months for a few reasons.

Lack of customization options. I had some issues with the default themes, and couldn't really fix it. This left a bit of extra strain on my eyes during daytime reading.

Wasn't supporting my Calibre library properly. But, kind of moot since I use a different app for that, as I argued earlier in this post.

Speed. I had huge issues with page-turning in some retail ebooks, and that shouldn't be happening on my Nexus 7 with such a tiny app. Memory and speed issues don't exist for me on Moon+. It seems to prerender properly, and the animation doesn't slow down the responsiveness.

I'm going to have to check out Montano like charleski recommended. Although, it looks like it only supports EPUB/PDF? That's kind of...crippled. Not even MOBI support? :-/

Can someone comment on the status of Android tablet apps? I keep on hearing that there are very little tablet-optimized app for Android, but I would like to hear opinions from actual Nexus 7/10 owners.

I don't own a Nexus tablet but I do own a Transformer Prime.

I haven't found a need for special tablet apps. Almost all of my favorite apps adjust to the display size dynamically and don't require the use of the special "zoom" button. Pulse is a good example. It just displays more news tiles on a larger screen. FBreader works just as well on the tablet as it does on the phone. Magazine apps such as Linux Journal and the Economist seem to just display more of the page which removes the need to zoom in and scroll. There are several games that I like which seem to change their control layout for use on tablets, although I suspect they are just examining the display properties and adjusting the layout.

It seems to me that Android doesn't need special tablet apps, as long as the app authors have written the app to use dynamic adjustments for display properties. The large variety of displays for Android makes this necessary anyway, unlike the Apple environment where there are only two display sizes, plus 2x resolutions.

I have to agree here. For most apps, you don't need a tablet version as they adjust nicely and take size into consideration. Claiming Android needs special tablet apps is just people trying to distract against Android. Does this mean all apps work great on a tablet? No, there is the rare one you will notice, but for the most part, the apps work great from phone to tablet.

It's like claiming you need a special version of your app designed for a 13 inch laptop and the redesign a completely different one for a 21 inch monitor.

A quick note about Evernote; it really IS available on nearly every platform. My wife has a Nexus 7 (hence the reason I read the article), but I use a Nokia Lumia 900 (Windows Phone 7.5). I decided to put that claim to the test and there sure-as-$#!^ is an Evernote app for free in the Windows Phone Marketplace. Very awesome indeed.

No ubuntu version

Nothing's perfect. Get some folks together and email the devs about a *nix version. Porting from the MacOS version wouldn't be too bad.

Dolphin's UI is so much better than Firefox or Chrome that it beggars belief. The intuitive access to bookmarks by sideswiping is the best way to handle them -- so much so that I struggle with the other browsers. Dolphin also has numerous extensions. I often use translate page, night mode, Pocket and Save as PDF. As for its renderer, it is WebKit based, thus highly compatible and fast.

I normally am browser-agnostic but in this case Dolphin is vastly, vastly superior.

Ah .. found VimTouch. Life will be just fine after that is installed on the tablet.

VimTouch is inferior to ZShaolin (which comes with its own compiled Vim) if you do anything remotely complex with Vim. There's a ticket in the system to build VimTouch's self-hosted Vim with a less restricted feature set--VimTouch was built by someone who was not a Vim power user, and there's no documentation for rebuilding the native binaries with decent compile settings.

It's like claiming you need a special version of your app designed for a 13 inch laptop and the redesign a completely different one for a 21 inch monitor.

Right, because UI didn't change from the early 13" monitors until the time 20" monitors became commonplace. Nobody ever decided they wanted more efficient use of their screen real estate. It would have been so hard to implement a system of windows that filled the screen...

Behaving as an apologist for the state of Android tablet software like this is just sad. Even Google doesn't do that! Of course developers need to rethink their designs in response to a much larger screen. If you care about user experience and not just the victory of the platform you've chosen to cheerlead you can't honestly think this. An auto layout algorithm is never a match for careful attention by a human.

It's the only reader I've found that doesn't create a second copy of everything for it's own use. Creating a second hidden library makes library tools like Calibre worthless since you can't remove books from the reader app.

Calibre Companion = No more organizational issues. You shouldn't be relying on your ebook reader for library management. You should use a library management tool. And Calibre Companion is the only app I know of that is officially supported by the Calibre dev.

I don't rely on my eBook reader for library management. I delete books off the ereader after I've finished them, which helps me work through my backlog.

Quote:

And typically all you have to do with ereader apps to fix your problem is just set the library directory to the directory you already store your files in. BOOM. No second library.

Nope, tried it with half a dozen apps. Didn't work. Delete the book on the reader... doesn't delete the copy Calibre sees. Delete from the Calibre application... doesn't delete the copy the reader app sees.

I just bought Calibre Companion yesterday to send files wirelessly to my reader, but I'm not really seeing any other advantages to it that FBReader doesn't already do for me. Given the quality of Calibre, though, I anticipate many new and nifty features in the future.

I tried Dolphin as a result of this article and found the user agent spoofing to be a welcome addition for avoiding the crude and often non-functional mobile versions of otherwise excellent websites.

Unfortunately, the browser is still incredibly slow at rendering (on iOS), and the "open links in new tab" option does not always work as expected. I will definitely keep this browser around however, so I can access the desktop version of websites that simply refuse to allow mobile devices to access this content.

It seems to me that Android doesn't need special tablet apps, as long as the app authors have written the app to use dynamic adjustments for display properties. The large variety of displays for Android makes this necessary anyway, unlike the Apple environment where there are only two display sizes, plus 2x resolutions.

I have to agree here. For most apps, you don't need a tablet version as they adjust nicely and take size into consideration. Claiming Android needs special tablet apps is just people trying to distract against Android. Does this mean all apps work great on a tablet? No, there is the rare one you will notice, but for the most part, the apps work great from phone to tablet.

It's like claiming you need a special version of your app designed for a 13 inch laptop and the redesign a completely different one for a 21 inch monitor.

There are many apps that scale poorly--that's just poor design--but for some apps, scaling isn't the issue. Any app with too much dead space is simply scaling poorly. I think Ars has pointed out the Twitter app often as an example of this.

However, something like Astro file manager, while perfect for my GS3 phone whose 4.7" screen really wouldn't support a tree/folder view, isn't optimal for my 10.1" Asus Transformer. On it, I use File Manager HD for the tablet instead.

I don't rely on my eBook reader for library management. I delete books off the ereader after I've finished them, which helps me work through my backlog.

Yes. The action you are describing is exactly what "library management" is. You are viewing and downloading your books using ODPS, organizing them using FBReader's library view, and deleting them when you're finished. You are doing all the things you would normally do to manage a library. Also, deleting a book in Calibre after you're done reading it is not a standard action that people take. Most people want to read a book more than once, or maybe keep it around for the future for some reason.

NicoleC wrote:

Nope, tried it with half a dozen apps. Didn't work. Delete the book on the reader... doesn't delete the copy Calibre sees. Delete from the Calibre application... doesn't delete the copy the reader app sees.

This, again, has nothing to do with creating a secondary library. You somehow think that you are syncing your library using the apps. You are not. You are, again, using ODPS to download (copy) a copy to your local device. Basically you are visiting a fancy, locally generated webpage to copy a file to your device. ODPS is a one-way street, whether you're using FBReader to connect to Calibre, or any of the many other eReaders that use the protocol. It's completely unintelligent, so Calibre has no way of knowing at all what copies of what files are on your device.

This is not an issue with eReader apps. It's a standard way of serving files. Calibre Companion fixes the issue by allowing you to connect to Calibre's Device Server which does have the ability to know what files are or are not on your device. It's basically the only app, currently, that allows you to do this. See the rest of what I have to see about this below.

NicoleC wrote:

I just bought Calibre Companion yesterday to send files wirelessly to my reader, but I'm not really seeing any other advantages to it that FBReader doesn't already do for me. Given the quality of Calibre, though, I anticipate many new and nifty features in the future.

You are probably just using the same ODPS method of connecting (connecting to the Content Server). Instead you should use the "Connect as Wireless Device", making sure that Calibre has the Device Server active and running. You can do this by opening Calibre, hitting the Connect/Share button, and selecting "Start wireless device connection". Now, when you use Calibre Companion (CC) to connect to Calibre, you will see a little green checkmark next to the books on your device (if you have already imported them using CC). You can send items to your device by clicking a title, and hitting "Send to device" or the myriad other methods to triggering this action. When you disconnect you will see your titles properly in Calibre Companion. Now when you delete a book from CC, you will notice the green checkbox is gone the next time you connect to Calibre. Calibre now knows what books are on your device at all times, as long as you continue to use CC to manage your library. At this point you can use CC to download files either way, with only the "Wireless Device" mode truly allowing Calibre to know what is/isn't on your device. However, now Calibre will know if you downloaded a book to your device using ODPS through CC, so you have the convenience of remote access just like you seem to like.

Now when you want to read a book, you instead open CC (instead of FBReader) and long-press the book you want to read. It should open in your default eReader to the last page you were on (if you were already reading it). You should still be able to just open FBReader/Moon+ and have it load the book you're currently reading automatically. But to read new books that are already on your device (that were downloaded through CC), download your books from Calibre, or delete the ones in your library - you should be using Calibre Companion, which is specifically meant for library management. This will now give you loads of benefits: all the metadata from Calibre is preserved, it has a far more robust search/organizational system than most eReader libraries, and it's dedicated to doing the one thing it does - which it excels at.

Wow. Calling Emacs a text editor is like making a list of cars and including a Formula One prototype (minus the price). Your average commonplace geek, in general, isn't going to be very familiar with it.

Pro tip: Jota works fine for most .txt needs. It's not like many people need that kind of power on a tablet. If it's a running server, SSH in and then use the server's own binaries to edit (I find Nano does perfectly fine in a pinch). Even then, without dedicated page up / page down, directional keys, or TAB, any sort of IDE-type editing is going to be a PITA.

Behaving as an apologist for the state of Android tablet software like this is just sad. Even Google doesn't do that! Of course developers need to rethink their designs in response to a much larger screen. If you care about user experience and not just the victory of the platform you've chosen to cheerlead you can't honestly think this. An auto layout algorithm is never a match for careful attention by a human.

I'm not being apologist, I'm being a realist with the honest truth in what I've found in my daily usage of my tablet one year later. Truth might suck for you, but it doesn't make it less truthful or honest. I use my tablet for Web surfing, watching movies, playing a few games, reading Ebooks, watching YouTube, reading pdfs, doing email, video chats with my girlfriend and answering you here on Ars.

My Web browser has no issues with the larger screen size, it adds more tabs and shows more of my bookmarks then my phone. The movie player works great and has clearer icons on a larger screen. I play a rare game, in my case as I mentioned in another thread, a PSX emulator. The buttons can be resized and moved around so the larger screen size didn't change anything. I read Ebooks on the Nook app that is made for both tablet and phone. YouTube app again works great on tablets. I use ReplicGo PDF Reader for my pdfs and it again works great. Gmail again, great. Message+, yet again, great. News I use Currents, and it's.... Great, surprising I'm sure. And answering you... Well your annoying, but the website browser is great.

And you know what? None of these are "tablet" apps. They are android apps that are made for phone or tablet. I don't use "website browser for phone" and "Web browser for tablet" because it's designed in one package for this. Movie player, Gmail, Currents, etc... They are already made to take these different screen sizes into mind. This isn't iOS where an app can't figure out if it's a phone or tablet and just stretches an app like silly putty. Most real developers make the app to show best on the screen size, and that isn't stretch, that's take advanced of the screen properly.

Next time you want to claim something like this, it's good to try it before you open your mouth. Because if you had, you'd have known that most apps aren't stretched on a tablet, they are built with a layout for a phone and tablet in one package.

JVC will be announcing compatible applications as the year moves forward, but is kicking off 2013 with MotionX GPS-Drive promising to deliver iPhone augmented lane assistance, live speed limit updates, navigation tools, maps and turn by turn commands.